Since 1976 I've owned and operated bridge clubs in New York City. For the past four plus years that club has been Honors. We currently run 19,000 duplicate tables a year, but we are most proud of the dozens of classes, the now ten rubber bridge sessions, and the five games for players with fewer than 50 master points, that we offer every week. I'm 1st Alternate on the BoG representing Unit 155 and a member of Steve Moese's BOG Teacher and Club Manager Committee. My second beginner book "A Taste of Bridge" was just published by Master Point Press.

For forty years I tried in vain to find ways for our member clubs to work hand in hand with our local Unit board. Being so totally ineffective on a local level naturally discouraged me from seeking any political involvement on a national level till last year. Our Unit is but a microcosm of what's happening throughout the country. The time is ripe for people with experience and ideas to step up.

I'm encouraged by the feeling of a perfect storm on the horizon. Everyone seems to be buying into the need to find new ways to grow our organization. With so much talent and energy behind us, good things will happen.

This is a Private Forum for teachers and club owners.
This forum is for sharing best practices for managing bridge clubs of all sizes. It is also for sharing best practices for bridge teachers. This forum is not restricted to any one zone or language. Emphasis will be on business building approaches, promotion and advertising ideas, and recruiting new players / students. Hopefully we can learn from each other, answer peer questions, and avoid energy wasted on reinventing the wheel. The quality of this forum depends completely on member collaboration.

I'm thinking of trying something new. Reaching out to each other for help with choosing really great example hands for our lessons. Maybe eventually having this develop into a warehouse of hands.

Every other week or so our club, Honors, hosts a combination wine and cheese Friday evening seminar and social play session. We alternate the level of the student we are aiming at from just above beginner, where they have taken about a dozen lessons and played for a just couple of months, to players with up to 20 masterpoints. This past Friday the seminar topic, on hand evaluation, went really well. So well that the group wants us to do it again.

Here's the problem, and where, I hope, you could come in. We need more example hands.

I'm thinking, could we consider expanding this Forum into one that offers not only an exchange of ideas and philosophy but also one that can act as a shared source of new and better class material...better topic hands, better bidding examples, better teaching methods?

And if you'd consider that this could be a proper use of this space, I'd like to ask that the first topic we address be:

Hands that clearly illustrate the need to understand how to evaluate the playing strength of a hand based on the hand itself and on how, as the auction proceeds, that hand revalues.

Here's an example of what I mean. It is from a hand from that Friday seminar.

You hold: KJxx QJxx x KJxx

You hear your partner open 1D and, over your 1H response, hear her come back with 2D.

I then showed them a similar 11 count, but this time I changed their singleton diamond holding into queen and one.

After the lecture (lesson) we have them play anywhere from four to six hands. It is these hands, hands that demonstrate by their results the need to properly be able to evaluate, not only the pluses and minuses of the hand presented, but also how, during the ensuing auction, that same hand might change dramatically in their estimation of its playing strength.

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